REPLY: This site uses a moderation que, and sometime posts don’t show for a few hours overnight. See the policy page.

If Miskolczi is correct, that would be one of the most inconvenient truths of all. It would also confirm something that a large number of skeptics have suspected for a long time.

Thought you might be interested in this article from the Daily Tech

“Runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations,” Miskolczi states. Just as the theory of relativity sets an upper limit on velocity, his theory sets an upper limit on the greenhouse effect, a limit which prevents it from warming the Earth more than a certain amount.

How did modern researchers make such a mistake? They relied upon equations derived over 80 years ago, equations which left off one term from the final solution.

Miskolczi was just at the same conference. Looks like interesting info.

REPLY: yes I was aware of this, but I wanted to read through it before doing any writeup on it.

REPLY: Not that I am aware of

My own feeling is that we have lots of problems with surface stations, but on average they give results with reasonable accuracy, that matches with satellite data. Having said that I fully endorse Anthony\’s mission on making our surface stations even better. I was hoping Anthony could comment about it, but I suspect he is busy with his travel, etc.

That is exactly what I have been thinking. And it fits with my thumbnail prejudice that GW since 1979 is overstated by about a factor of two.

REPLY: They were not there, but I believe were invited. Pielke and McIntyre had other commitments AFAIK. Not sure about the others. There was so many people that I could not meet them all. I was particularly impressed that Jennifer Marohasy and Bob Carter made the trip from down under.

Also absent were protesters, although we heard rumblings that there might be some. NYC doesn’t tolerate that stuff well, since it disrupts the city.

There is more disagreement in the balloon temperature data. Arguably the least the result of adjustments of the three.

That’s because it is not theoretical. It is empirical and irrefutable. There may be dispute as to the full extent of the effects, but it is solid as a rock. I could see that from day 1.

But I have a basic question which kind of puzzling me. Dr Christy and Spencer at University of Alabama note that the difference between surface stations and satellite data is relatively small (3 deg F vs 2.52 deg F per century). In addition, Dr. Christy says comparing satellite data and surface
measurements, (quoting from http://www.uah.edu/News/climatebackground.php ) that “In areas where you have high resolution, well- maintained scientific collection of temperature data, the satellites and the surface data show a high degree of agreement,” said Christy. “Over North America, Europe, Russia, China and Australia, the agreement is basically one-to-one.” and “The greatest disagreement between the surface and satellite datasets is in the tropics, which includes regions where weather stations are sparse (including central Africa and South America)…”

Since such a one to one match exists for the U.S., is it possible that the corrected surface data, irrespective of how bad the stations are, is accurate enough to have such a good agreement with the satellite data? I am sure I am missing something somewhere. Thanks very much!!

http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/03/heartland-institute-times-square.html

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/lessons-from-the-skeptics-conference/